Commitments

by Barbara Delinsky

  He made a gesture of his own, indicating to Sabrina that she should sit. Taking deep, measured breaths, he bowed his head and ran a hand through his hair. With his weight set on one hip and a finger hooked through the beltless loop of his jeans, he glared at the ground.

  Sabrina saw his fury and shared his frustration. She wanted to turn and shriek at the guard who had been responsible for destroying a rare and lovely moment. But it was a foolish impulse, quickly controlled. She waited silently for Derek to gather himself and join her.

  “Why did he do that?” she asked softly.

  He sat forward with his elbows on spread thighs and his fingers tightly laced. The muscle in his jaw worked. His nostrils flared around each angry breath. “Because I’m me.”

  She leaned closer, unconsciously seeking the warmth she’d had moments before. “What do you mean?”

  His hardened gaze roamed the yard. “Reverse discrimination. I was a somebody in the free world, so I have to work twice as hard in here.”

  “But what was the problem if we were touching?”

  “Not touching. Em-bra-cing.”

  “That isn’t allowed?”

  “Once at the beginning, once at the end.”

  “But this is the beginning.”

  “Fat Frank decided the beginning was over.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  He sliced her a look that started with a sarcastic twist of the lips, then softened into a crooked smile when he saw her wounded expression. “Not fair, huh?”

  “I’ve seen other couples hold each other much longer and no one says a word—even when their hands are all over the place. Look over there,” she said, tossing a glance toward one of the other benches. “She’s on his lap, and he isn’t treating her for a scraped knee. If that isn’t an embra-ce”—she drawled the word as he had—“I don’t know what is.”

  “It’s an embrace,” Derek said, but he wasn’t looking at the couple on the other bench. There was too much to see on Sabrina’s face, like the brightness of her pale green eyes and the flush on her cheeks. And the faint smudges beneath her eyes and the worry lines between her brows. “How’s Nicky?”

  Her gaze flew to his. She took a deep breath. “Nicky’s okay now.”

  “Has he had any other seizures?”

  She shook her head. “I have medication in case he does, but there’s been nothing since that first one. I wish I could say, ‘thank God’, but I’m not sure what’s worse—the seizure itself or waiting for it to happen.”

  “That’s because it’s all still new. You expect a seizure any minute. Once time passes and nothing happens, you’ll relax more.”

  That was what the hospital social worker had said. Coming from Derek it sounded less patronizing, more believable. “I hope so.”

  Derek wanted to know more. He’d often wondered about Nicky. Since Sabrina had refused to be interviewed for his story, he’d never learned the history of the child’s illness. And he wanted something, needed something to overshadow his darker thoughts.

  “What was he like, when he was born?”

  “He was a complacent baby for the first couple of months. Actually, he was complacent even before he was born.”

  Derek tried to imagine her pregnant, tried to imagine her stomach puffed and round. He succeeded too well. The image was lovely. It was also sexy as hell, and his body responded quickly. He was glad he was sitting as he was.

  “He didn’t move around much inside you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have morning sickness?”

  “No. He was a terrific little kid. Another cruel irony. I was so happy, so excited about having a baby,” she said, and her eyes, those telling eyes of hers, reflected just that until they turned bewildered. “I wish I knew where it all went wrong.”

  “When did you first notice that Nicky was different?”

  “On the day he was born,” she said dryly. “I was like every other mother who looks at her child and worries. From the very beginning I thought Nicky was too still. I didn’t think he was focusing the way he should. Even the little fussing he did seemed strange, somehow distant, ill-timed, inappropriate, distracted. But everyone said he was fine and healthy and beautiful, and I wanted to believe that. So I pushed my worries aside. If you’re asking when I began to take them seriously, it was when I took him to have his picture taken. He was fourteen weeks old. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing—I’d been walking through Macy’s; the photographer was there; I thought it would be fun.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  She shook her head. “I stood in line watching the other children go before us. They smiled and laughed. A couple of them were really homely, but still they were sweet, and the photographer was good with the ones who cried. She had a way with kids.” Sabrina paused, sniffed in a long breath and arched a brow toward Derek. “Not with Nicky. He fussed the whole time. She shook a rattle. She waggled a furry rabbit. She put on a hand puppet. Nothing worked. She never got him past the fussing stage—forget trying to make him smile. But that wasn’t all.”

  Any humor she’d exhibited in the telling of the story faded then, and the line between her brows grew more pronounced. “He couldn’t hold himself like the others. I knew he wasn’t doing well with his head, and I’d already asked my doctor about it and been given little exercises to do, but it wasn’t only his neck. It was his hands and his arms, his legs, his whole body. He just … drooped … and looking at him in comparison to those other kids, some of whom were barely half his age, I knew. I knew.”

  Needing to give comfort, Derek smoothed a strand of blond hair back from her cheek. It was soft to the touch. He watched it settle over the greater mass of blond, then dance a little when the breeze picked up. “Did the doctors confirm it then?”

  She dipped her head slightly in the direction from which that comfort had come, but the hand was already gone. “It should only have been that easy,” she murmured. “When Nicky was five months old, my own pediatrician was still saying he’d be fine. I started seeing specialists then, and they all said, yes, he was slow, but there wasn’t much that could be done until he was a little older. It wasn’t until he’d hit a year that I finally had a doctor look at me and say, ‘Your son is retarded.’”

  Remembering that moment, she wrapped her arms around herself and dropped her gaze to her feet. She was wearing low heels that matched the khaki green of her long sweater and skirt. The way the color clashed with the grass was appropriate. “I never thought I’d face something like this. It’s something that’s supposed to happen to other people—to poor people who can’t afford prenatal care, or cruel people who knock their kids around, or irresponsible people who leave their kids alone with plastic Baggies, or … or just dumb people.” She raised her eyes to Derek’s. “Pretty bigoted, huh?”

  “Naive, that’s all.”

  “Well,” she said with a sigh that was part philosophical, part discouraged, “I’m paying for my sins twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year and you can add self-pity to the list. I know I’m indulging in it, and I don’t care. I really don’t care.”

  “Self-pity feels good sometimes.”

  “You do it, too?”

  “Sure.” And a lot more often lately, when he’d been rock-hard with no source of relief. But he didn’t want to go into that. “I’m surprised you were able to get away. Who’s with Nicky now? Another of the therapists?”

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, feeling a tiny burst of strength, “I hired someone new. Do you remember the maid who let you in when she shouldn’t have?” He nodded, so she went on. “I let her go last week and hired a live-in nurse who could give me more of a hand with Nicky.”

  “The maid wasn’t good with him?”

  “She had a bad back. Or said she had a bad back. I think she hated kids.”

  “Then why did you hire her in the first place?”

  “I didn’t.”

  It took Derek just a minute to inter
pret the look in her eye. So her husband had hired the maid. “Then I’m glad you let her go,” he said. His double meaning was clear and he felt not the slightest remorse. “Maybe things will ease up for you now.”

  “I hope so,” she said quietly. Tell him, Sabrina. Tell him Nick’s gone. “Things can’t get much worse than they’ve been. Assuming there aren’t any more emergency trips to the hospital…” Her voice trailed off. Suddenly she wasn’t thinking of Nick, nor of Derek’s right to know about the separation. She was thinking of that last emergency trip to the hospital and of the feelings she’d had. She needed to tell someone. She had held those thoughts in and held them in, but she needed to tell someone now, and Derek was there.

  “It was difficult being with Nicky in the hospital like that.” Her voice was small, which was how she felt. “In some ways it was no different from all the other times I’ve brought him in for examinations and tests. I sit and wait and pray that they’ll find something, that they’ll be able to give me a specific cause for his problems and then give him a little pill that will suddenly wake him up and make him like other children his age. Little pill, big pill, operation, something, anything. Lately…” She rubbed her arm. “Lately it’s been even harder, because there are times when I almost pray that they diagnose him as having something terminal.”

  She dared a quick glance at Derek. “There are times when all I want in life is to hold him, rock him, sing to him, love him—and other times when I wake up in the morning bone-tired and trembling, and I go into his room half hoping that something will have happened to him during the night.” Her voice had shrunk to a whisper. “That’s what I’ve become.”

  At that moment, Derek felt even more compassion for her than he’d felt the first day he’d seen her on her terrace in New York. If he’d had any doubts about his capacity for feeling—beyond just sexual feeling—they were gone. “Don’t say it that way,” he chided. He wrapped his hand around the point above her elbow, gently removing the hand that was kneading the spot compulsively. “You’re human. Anyone in your position would feel the same at times.”

  “But isn’t it awful?” she cried. “A mother wishing her child dead?”

  He slid his hand up to her neck, fingers finding their way under her hair to work at her tension. “You don’t wish him dead, Sabrina. You wish him perfectly healthy and normal. But he isn’t. So there are times—despairing times that always pass—when you wonder if being dead wouldn’t be better than being severely and irreversibly brain-damaged.”

  “It’s just that I had such dreams,” she said, and her eyes were filled with them. “Dreams of him laughing, climbing trees in the park, playing baseball. He was going to be a swimmer, too, and an A student. He was going on to a top college. He was going to be well liked and happy. He was going to be a leader.” Tears had replaced the dreams. “It’s such a waste.”

  “I know,” he whispered, then leaned closer and, still whispering, said, “I’m going to put my arm around you for just a minute. If Fat Frank yells, don’t move.” He slid along the bench, curved a long, sinewy arm around her back and drew her in. She wasn’t aware of deliberately moving, but somehow she ended up with her face against his throat and her hand on his chest.

  Fat Frank didn’t yell, and still she didn’t move.

  Derek tightened his hold. He had his face in her hair and was inhaling the jasmine scent that was so faint and alluring. He’d built more erotic dreams around that scent in the last few weeks than he cared to count.

  Sabrina did the counting—his heartbeats as they echoed against her palm—then wondered whether the heartbeats were his or hers. She knew that her pulse was racing and didn’t pause to decide whether it was because of the naturally musky scent of his neck, the chest hair that curled beneath her thumb, or the threat of Fat Frank.

  Fat Frank didn’t yell, and still she didn’t move.

  Derek pressed her infinitesimally closer. He liked the way her breasts felt against him, not obtrusive, just enticing. He liked the slenderness of her thigh beside his. And the gentle sough of her breath by his throat was raising his temperature by multiple degrees. He knew he was playing with fire, but he didn’t care.

  Sabrina floated. If there had been tears in her eyes, they’d dried, and she could barely remember their cause. Derek had taken the weight from her shoulders and was supporting her with ease. She wanted to thank him, but to use her voice at that moment would have been unthinkable.

  Fat Frank didn’t yell, and still she didn’t move.

  Derek lowered his head and was about to press a gentle kiss on her forehead when Fat Frank yelled.

  “McGill!”

  Derek moaned. He held her tighter, arms trembling slightly before slowly, slowly setting her back. “Goddamned pig,” he whispered, glowering at the guard.

  Sabrina’s returning whisper was far more vulnerable and immediately brought his attention back to her. “Derek?”

  “Mmm?”

  “I haven’t ever told anyone what I just told you.”

  He’d pretty much guessed that by the desperate way she’d pushed the words out, as though if they didn’t get an airing, and quickly, she’d have suffocated. He wanted to know why she hadn’t ever told her husband, but he didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want to acknowledge that a husband existed. He wanted to pretend that if it hadn’t been for Fat Frank Ferrucci, he’d still have Sabrina in his arms.

  “You can tell me your secrets anytime,” he said thickly. “And I’ll understand. I know all about broken dreams.”

  “Yours aren’t broken, just deferred.”

  “That’s a debatable point.”

  “Tell me about them, Derek. What do you dream of?”

  “Now? Mrs. Fields’ white-chunk macadamia-nut cookies.”

  In spite of herself, Sabrina smiled. As humor went, it was a little dry, but still it was humor. Derek had never joked with her before. She remembered how stern-faced and angry he’d been during her first visit. He’d come far.

  “No, I mean more generally.”

  He was thinking that her smile had to be the most beautiful sight in the world. He wished he were a funny man, if only to see it again, but he wasn’t; and unfortunately most of his dreams weren’t amusing. “I dream of my release.”

  “And then?”

  “Revenge.”

  She saw the little look that came and went from his eyes and couldn’t resist a tiny shudder. “That’s scary.”

  He shrugged, and wasn’t about to add anything until he realized that she really was frightened. “Nothing to worry about,” he said, but his voice was shadowed. “It’s part of the mentality in here. Drawing up plans for revenge gives you a feeling of power, and power’s the name of the game.”

  “Like Fat Frank’s yells?”

  “Like that. I intimidate him and the other guards too, because of who I am and where I’ve been. So they go out of their way to put me down. It gives them a semblance of control.” He heard his own words, thought about them for a second, then grunted. “Who am I kidding? They have the control. It just gives them double satisfaction to rub it in in my case.”

  “Good thing you never did an exposé on correctional officers,” she said dryly.

  “Oh, I did. It was actually a story of the inmate bureaucracy in the state prison system in Indiana, but it did a job on the guards.”

  A grimacing Sabrina lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you think they know about it?”

  “I know they know about it. On the day I arrived here, the warden told me in no uncertain terms that he knew. Other guards have made comments since then. I assume the warden got a copy of either the tape or the transcript and passed it around.”

  “That wasn’t particularly ethical.”

  “No, but then, it makes my point. Prisons aren’t particularly ethical places.”

  “Is there an underworld here, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Provid
es goods and services inmates want and can’t otherwise get.”

  “Like drugs?”

  “Among other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “Sabrina, you don’t want to know.” He narrowed his eyes. “It seems like I’ve said that to you before. Why do you ask so many questions? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had an obsession with prison life.”

  Ignoring that, she looked him over. “I don’t see any new scars. Are you managing to stay out of fights, at least?”

  “I wasn’t in a fight,” he said, scowling. “I was trying to break one up.”

  “Are there fights often?”

  The scowl faded but didn’t completely go away. “Yes.”

  “That’s disgraceful.”

  “It’s inevitable. Prisons are filled with angry men. Beneath the anger is violence just waiting to erupt.”

  “And when it does, what does the administration do?”

  Derek stretched out, extending his legs, bracing his elbows on the back of the bench. His hands were balled. He was looking straight ahead. “In some cases, disciplinary measures are taken against the men involved. In other cases, the administration looks the other way.”

  “How can they do that?”

  “They reason it’s the practical thing to do. If the guy who starts a fight is a powerful figure in the inmate bureaucracy, punishing him could open the door to greater violence. No warden wants a riot on his hands.”

  Sabrina was sitting sideways on the bench, studying the hard lines of his profile. “Where do you fit into that bureaucracy?”

  “I don’t.”

  “You’re not involved at all?”

  He pushed out his lips and slowly shook his head.

  “You’re bucking the internal system?”